The Letter
by deputayjane
Summary: Starts during Dirty Girls and ends PostChosen. Buffy admits she loves Faith in a letter. What will happen now that they are seeing each other again? WIP much more to come.


Title: "The Letter"

Chapter One Rating: PG-13

Author: Potentially Jane

Disclaimer: BtVS belongs to Joss Whedon, Mutant Enemy, and PTB. Acceptance and their lyrics belong to Columbia Records.

Description: This chapter takes place exactly during Dirty Girls, so would be considered off-screen, I suppose. Buffy also is remembering this in past-tense so she does at times refer to things that have not yet occurred. Also the misspellings and comma errors in Faith's letters are meant to be that way, but I'll accept any other errors if you spot them. I don't have a beta.

FB otherwise is also welcome, thanks.

I didn't need to make any excuses, I merely walked up the stairs, straight to my room, and shut the door. No one followed me, they were probably too excited to even notice my departure.

I had abandoned all the chaos of my living room. Everyone crowded around Faith, with Dawn glaring daggers into her skin that I couldn't help but notice. All our little Potentials (or Training Pants, as Xander and I refer to them with hushed giggles), shocked to see the 'evil slayer' they've been whispering about during their slumber parties. Standing before them, Faith. Defensively trying to explain to them all that she had changed, was there to help us, was a powerful asset for bringing down the First and it's minions. She was right, and I was wrong for not calling Angel and asking him to send her to us weeks ago. My pride, my apprehension, my fear; they had kept me from bringing a second slayer in to fight the doom. At least someone still had their wits when mine were lost.

I laid down on my bed, staring up at the ceiling above me.

It was the first time in days that I had been alone in my own bedroom, which is ironic considering all the nights in highschool that I had laid awake there, wishing for someone else to come and soothe my loneliness away. Maybe that's why I did it? Loneliness? I'd like to think it, but the back of my mind tells me to stop being so stupid. I know exactly why I did it.

Now she's here and... I wasn't ready. Not ready to fight the First, not ready to lead the Training Pants to their certain death, definitely not ready to look at Faith again after all that I've said to her and acknowledge her beyond "Nice to see you".

Laying in my bed, I couldn't help but remember the night behind me, feebly attempting to reconcile the shock within my own mind. How could Willow have surprised me like that? It wouldn't wear off, I couldn't shake it. Only concentrate repeatedly on every second in slow-motion.

Faith, coming through the shadows.

Faith, becoming blurry in the darkness as she struggled against Spike. No, not struggled. She gained the upper hand and easily could have killed him. For two years now I have been impressed with his power, his strength, his ability to turn a fight in his favor so quickly. Yet she is there for three minutes and he's nearly finished. Maybe she spent a lot of time practicing her technique in prison. Or maybe I had simply forgotten just how effortlessly she manipulates the physical world surrounding her, convincing all life to lay slave to her bidding. He could not help but be swept away within it, incapable to rise to Faith's level. I would have been content to watch. God, how I loved to watch her. She would have been content to stake him. It all would have worked out temporarily, at least until I realized that Spike really was a valuable asset to us all. How soon would I have remembered that little fact if I had not interfered?

I punched her in the face. Cold, solid, unforgiving. It was the only way we ever kissed, in our foreplay dance of fighting and near-death experiences. It was more than that, it was how we touched; bare-knuckled fists meeting tooth and bone, awkward and certain, like a one-night stand in the back of a bar. It had always been the closest we allowed ourselves to get to one another, and this time it felt like a lover's reunion.

It hurt me to do it, but it brought everything into focus.

The worst part had been walking home after that. Cue my humility and embarrassment, strong emotions that can be sensed by sister slayers, and smelled by certain peroxide vampires. Neither of them asked. We were all three too occupied with being silent and uncomfortable while stalking through the streets. On Revello Drive once again; I wanted nothing more than to get away from them both and to regain my security. The biggest fight of my life was tentatively waiting to knock at the door like a Mormon on his first porch, and all that consumed me was my fear of facing her. Really facing her. Being alone and forced to admit to what I had said to her. How could something suddenly scare me more than the First, more than Caleb, more than UberVamps, more than the Bringers laying slaughter on innocent Potentials before I could save them?

_Faith_

_I bet you're surprised to be hearing from me. I'm surprised to be writing to you. My life has changed since you last saw me. Anyway, I don't have much to say. Angel has been telling me a lot of things about you. I want you to know that I forgive you. I do__n't know if you want my forgiveness or not, but I need to give it to you... for me. You can write to me if you want, I'd like it. Angel says he'll mail it for you if you give it to him next time he comes. I'm sorry._

_Buffy_

Years have gone by since I wrote that to her. I died in between. I was resurrected in between. I lost myself.

Angel said that when he slipped it under the bulletproof plastic of the confined visiting area at the prison, her eyes had filled with tears. It wasn't the first time he had seen her cry, but he tried to somehow make it clear to me in his recounting of events that this moment had been far different. I couldn't comprehend, though I wanted to. I wanted to conceptualize exactly how my letter had touched her, what it had made her feel. Perhaps I was selfish. Her wrenching pain of emotion became my personal salvation, the knowledge of it bringing me a twisted sense of peace. Somehow if she broke down and surrendered to a few scribbled, careless words on a piece of paper, it excused me from the burden of never reaching out to help her in the first place. I fucking should have.

Funny how when she went to prison, it was as though she had never left me. Not in the supernatural slayer way, but in the mental trickery sort of way. Emotional trickery, even. I couldn't let her go, and every time something came into focus of my vision, she was within my thoughts. I had Adam to destroy. I had a military boyfriend with disgustingly odd fetishes to please. I had Spike with a chip in his head. I had a world of things to preoccupy myself with, and all I could do was run to the mailbox. No one except for me, Faith, and Angel would know why I looked there, every day.

_Buffy_

_Thanks for the note. I forgive you too. I'm sorry too._

_I think about you a lot. Probably just the boredom. TV gets one channel and it's NBC. TV from hell. Can't says much cuz the guards read this. Hi Guards, how are you? Fuck your mothers._

_Thanks for writing B._

_-F_

Despite her lack of proper comma placement, her response was perfect. I couldn't stop reading it. Sometimes with tears. Sometimes with laughter. Cocky Faith, rubbing her ass in authority's nose, even in prison. Yet, after all that waiting, I finally had tangible proof that all between us was all right. For good, maybe. Briefly I contemplated the possibility that an immediate reply may make me seem desperate and uncool. I threw that fleeting thought out the window. The sooner I wrote, the sooner another response from her would arrive.

The only time that my letters to her stopped was when I was dead. After my friends brought me back, I didn't care much about writing to her anymore. That is, until Angel sent a package to my house, containing all of 15 letters from Faith that had piled up over those months. She knew I was dead, but she never stopped writing anyway. Guess it had been some kind of therapy for her. Maybe she missed me, I didn't really know, and I was too cold and lifeless inside to care. I shoved the package under my bed and mostly forgot about it. A cunning plan, but only temporary.

It stayed there for a while. I could resist it when everything was "normal" enough, but not when I was singing and dancing the night that Xander summoned Sweet. I pranced around the graveyards with a stake in my hand, sputtering cheesy lyrics that would have made Andrew Lloyd Webber weep. After dusting the equally-musical Vampires, I headed home. Maybe part of Sweet's enchantment was to make me overly sentimental and dramatic, I'm not wholly sure, but for some reason I pulled those letters out. I don't remember what I sang while I read them, except that it was undeniably pathetic. Something like "Why did I let my guard down again/It's the one battle I'll never win/I wish I had never let her in/Ooh, on this one she used a sparkly pen" So on and so forth. Undeniably pathetic... but that was when I first knew.

Maybe it had been my disgust with myself for letting Spike finally touch me. Maybe it had been the careless way I approached life after death. Maybe it was a little bit of all three wrapped up in self-loathing and frustration.

_Faith_

_Thanks for writing me while I was dead. I'm alive again. Not much to say about that, although I have been listening to thrash metal a lot. _

_I don't know what to say about your letters, but please don't stop writing them. They are the closest thing to making me happy because they are one of the few things that don't make me miserable. That's something._

_I hope that everything is going well. I realized I'm in love with you._

_Buffy_

In retrospect, she may have thought it was a joke. At the time, it didn't occur to me just how strange it was to write something that casually, because the idea of love itself was just as casual to me in my passive state. Despite my inability to feel substantial emotion, I knew that I'd had a love for her that had been growing since she walked into my life, but I'd never faced it before I wrote that letter. If I had cared an ounce about myself, I never would have mailed it.

Months rolled by.

Tara was killed. Willow... just Willow.

I had gained a grip on my world once more and had watched the world nearly end (again). That's when the reply came.

_B_

_Things are going good. I got moved into a "low-risk" section where I have more freedom to weightlift and spar with stationery objects. Also the TV in the low-risk common room has more channels I now get CBS and Fox too so sometimes I watch the Simpsons. I__ts great thanx for writing._

_Love Faith_

Someone knocked on the door. I had fallen asleep going over the past in my head, trying to analyze everything in preparation. Just like training before a big demon fight. Only mentally. And this time, my big demon was lasting humiliation from being rejected by Faith, of all people.

"Buffy, can I come in?" Dawn.

Hard to say how long I had been asleep, but I had promised Dawn my room as sanctuary from the Potentials whenever she needed it, including overnight. This was another one of those times.

"Are they being brats down there?" I asked as she took a seat on the bed beside me.

"An emphatic 'yes'. As much as I'd like to see Faith spontaneously combust, I almost feel sorry for her. She's only been here three hours and already they have driven her so crazy that she smoked two packs of cigarettes. No joke." My drama queen baby sister rolled her eyes unnecessarily and leaned back against the headboard. I don't respond, which seems to give the wheels of sarcasm a chance to start spinning in her head. "You know," Dawn mock-speculated, "I always thought that being annoying was another slayer skill that is bestowed along with the super strength and reflexes. Now that I've met all those girls, I see it's probably a pre-req'."

I managed to muster the weakest smile ever, but it satisfied her for the time-being. Neither one of us had shared a genuinely carefree moment in weeks, maybe even months, but that's the sort of thing that sisters don't fret about. With friends, even ones as close as Willow and Xander, you've got to reach one other every once in a while and remind them that you still care or else they feel insecure about your relationship. I used to think that I didn't have to do that with Dawn, but as she's gotten older, she's needed that security, too. Who can blame her? Her dad was a shithead, she found out all her memories were fake, her big sister died, her mom died... good things don't happen to kids with the last name Summers, it seems.

Chapter Two

Dawn and I had laid there on my bed in the quiet enjoyment of sisterly company for a while. Occasionally there would be a crash from downstairs or a squeal. The Training Pants had officially run out of their cuteness factor, at least for the day. I habitually wondered what Faith was doing down there, or if she even was still around. Maybe she had taken off to get more cigarettes. Wouldn't really be a surprise, after all, she usually didn't stick around in the same spot for too long if she could help it.

I knew that Dawnie had fallen asleep by her half-snoring, half-wheezing noises. She hadn't changed into pajamas, but I didn't want to disturb her. I laid in the dark and strained to make out Faith's voice through the various murmurs from downstairs. At one point I thought I heard her for sure, so I tensed up and listened harder, but when 'she' said "You are SO full of it, Amanda!" I realized it had just been Kennedy. They sounded a lot alike. Well, through the walls they did, anyway.

I'd been losing sleep over the First for so long that I should have been tired. I don't even know when I finally did fall asleep, but I woke up just enough to open one eye, look around to see that all was well, and then drift off once more about 20 times before the sun rose. When the alarm went off, I was certain that I had been awake forever, vividly prepared for every insignificant happenstance. Dawn, on the other hand, could barely manage to rouse herself in order to prepare for school.

As I showered, peacefully, I thought about something other than Faith for the first time since I'd seen her in the graveyard the night before. I speculated to myself the benefits of waking up earlier than all the Potentials. This fleeting amusement lasted mere seconds. Each time I remembered the words of my letter, I felt dizzying humiliation that lined the border of regret. It was a physical pang, the same kind I used to get as a kid when mom would flash me a look that said I'd just screwed something up.

I washed the same parts of my anatomy repeatedly, not stopping. Shoulders, chest, armpits. Shoulders, chest, armpits.

Shoulders. _I realized I'm in love with you._

Chest. _I realized I'm in love with you._

Armpits. _I realized... _I'm so fucking stupid.

Shoulders. So fucking stupid.

Chest. So FUCKING stupid!

Armpits. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Stupid!

I neglected to lather any additional regions. I am a firm subscriber of the 'soap-trickles-down-and-thus-cleans' theory.

I stepped out of the shower, dressed, and touched up the make-up I'd been wearing for at least 24 hours. Some part of me hoped I'd open the door and she'd been standing there in the hallway, leaning against the frame. I pictured her saying "How was that shower, B? Wet enough for ya'?" before grabbing me by the collar and kissing me. It didn't matter that I legitimately knew this fantasy was entirely ridiculous, I still suffered disappointment when I stepped out to find the corridor empty.

It seems masochistic, but the hopeful prospect of Faith greeting me in every corner of the house as I absent-mindedly completed my pre-work routine made time pass by with a lack of misery. The anguish unfolded upon my arrival at the freshly and partially deserted Sunnydale high school. There was no possibility of a chance encounter with her in the Principal's office, or at the vending machines, or in the copy room. Just me, the scattered students, and Morning Wood (another Xanderesque giggle-enducing epithet).

Even that would prove to be rather short-lived.

"You're fired."

"What?" Extend my disbelief.

"Effective immediately." Morning Wood thought he had that whole badass thing going on.

I came fully into the office. "You're firing me? I just refrained from kicking your ass!" Disbelief quickly morphed into defensiveness, and then attempted intimidation. It's a slayer trick. You scare people, they give you what you want. I'd been doing it for long enough that I now adapted it perfectly to blend in with normal, non-superhuman stuff.

Robin Hooded-Wood (Xander again), gave his reasons which were convincing and relevant. How convincing and relevant? Just enough to mask that he was futilely asserting himself over me in the only possible realm that he could. A weak move, but I conceded. I didn't loathe him just yet... that would come later. For the time being I still considered him to be an ally when he wasn't all emo-angst and pompous.

I took Xander's Chrysler home and got Starbucks for the Training Pants girls on the way. I thought about the First, but there was nothing to contemplate. It was simply the same worn-out ideas floating through my head like a looped track from a shitty club DJ who never knows when to quit.

Through the front door. No sign of her. Into the kitchen. The girls were laughing out loud, crowded around various clusterfucks of spilled cereal, failed attempts at omelets, and dirty plates on my counter. Suddenly they noticed me; their faces instantly froze.

There's that slayer intimidation again. I'd gotten so good at it, I could do it without even trying. "Whoever cleans this shit up the fastest gets a caramel frappachino."

They scrambled like gerbils on meth amphetamines. I mumbled something about how they should have put that sort of energy into their training routines before I heard the distinct thud of well-worn Army boots making their way down the stairs. They weren't Spike's, it was daylight. I knew it was her even before I turned around and our eyes locked. My gaze seemed to have frozen her there, her body mid-strut at the bottom of the staircase, her right hand abiding in it's casual contact with the rail. I moved through the door frame and walked towards her without looking away from her face. In a brief second I thought I'd have the nerve to never stop walking, and somehow I'd find my lips touching her lips, my chest rising against her chest, my tongue encouraging her tongue. I didn't find that, and instead stood a fair three feet away. It wasn't close enough.

"G'morning B. Anything big?" She muttered, her face littered with telling signs of exhaustion.

I struggled inwardly for a second. My lack of immediate response made her give me the classic confused-Faith furrowed brow and the half-tilted head. She surprisingly had not demanded a patent for those two yet, at least as far as I knew of.

"Not too big," I said, sighing, "there's some Starbucks if you want it."

She finally removed her hand from the staircase rail and slipped it into her pants pocket. "Thanks, but I'm good. Putting coffee in with my ulcers is like inviting somebody's ex-boyfriend to their party, ya' know? Lots of fun until they run into each other and then it's the shits."

God, she's so dumb sometimes.

As if to really drive the point home that she's the biggest dork on the planet, she started laughing at her own joke, even though she was clearly trying like hell not to.

I ignored her. "There's also tea."

"What's up with you?" Faith blurted out, ignoring my polite tea offer.

"Besides the impending apocalypse? Probably... nothing." Lies.

She scoffed aloud. "Yeah right. I may have been gone for a couple of years, but it didn't ruin my people-skills. If I ever had 'em to begin with. I can tell when the Big Bad is under your skin and I can tell when it's something juicy. Your eyebrows do different things."

"You can tell what I'm upset about because of my eyebrows? Do they spell out words? Do they need to be tweezed?" I tried to joke. She was making me nervous. I didn't mind having a conversation about our letters, as long as I was in control. But whenever I was powerless against her, I always left feeling the same.

"Hey, I was in your body for a bit, remember? What do you think I was doing all of that time, besides social experiments on the public reaction towards blondes versus brunettes?"

"I don't want to think about you and Ril-"

"No, gross. I wasn't talkin' about that." She hastily interrupted, shaking her head with mock disgust. "Nah, I mean when I was standing in front of the mirror, for like, hours. Making faces and... shit. That's how I figured out your eyebrows. So quit changing the damned subject and tell me what's on your mind, slayer junior."

I hated it when she called me that. Worst of all nicknames. Ever. "I'll break your legs if you call me that again."

"You'd try." The corner of her lips turned up in the mother of all mischievous grins.

"You want to know what's bothering me? Aside from ultimate doom and peril approaching us?"

Faith shrugged stoically. "Sure, let me have it."

Deep sigh. I quickly checked to make sure all my emotions had been switched off, protecting me from any possible pain or humiliation. "Remember the letters I sent to you when you were in prison?"

She didn't even have to think about it before responding automatically. "Let's not talk about that."

"Ok." Stabbing, tearing, humiliation and pain. Fucking broken emotion switch. Turn off. Damnit you fucker, turn off!

"Ok." Faith brushed past me and straight to the kitchen, charging through the door that led to the basement.

I stood and stared. A remorseful masochist.


End file.
